Warring cousins

One of the many side-dramas of the Montfortian era in England was the bitter ongoing feud between the Lord Edward (later Edward I) and Robert de Ferrers, 6^th earl of Derby (1239-79). These men were cousins, and very alike in some ways: both were ambitious, belligerent, full of energy and willing to stoop to low methods to gain their ends. They differed in that Edward learned from his mistakes, while Robert seemed intent on compounding his.

The arms of the 6th earl

The origins of their feud are debatable. It may have stemmed from Edward’s sale of his cousin’s wardship to the queen and Peter of Savoy in 1257, though such transactions were not uncommon. Equally it may have stemmed from mere personal animosity between men who were too similar to endure each other’s presence. Whatever the case, it soon led to conflict.

Robert struck first. In 1263, when the whole of England was on the verge of civil war, he attacked and captured three of Edward’s castles. Which ones are not stated, though Robert probably focused on ravaging his kinsman’s estates in Derbyshire and the High Peak country. In early February he turned south and sacked Worcester, destroying both the town and the Jewry. On 5 March he almost had Edward cornered at Gloucester, but the latter managed to slide out of the trap by tricking Henry de Montfort into accepting a truce. Robert was so furious at Henry’s gullibility he ‘struck in his spurs’ and galloped off back to the north country.

Chartley castle

A few weeks later, after the royalist victory at Northampton, Edward went on the offensive. He blazed through Robert’s lands in Derbyshire, throwing down castles and extorting protection money from the earl’s tenants. This was part of a two-pronged campaign: at the same time Edward’s ally, Prince Dafydd of Wales, led an army of Marchers over the border to ravage the Ferrers estates in Staffordshire. Robert was in London with Earl Simon, apparently unwilling or unable to defend his lands.

The wheel of fortune took another dramatic spin at the Battle of Lewes on 14 May, where Edward and his father, Henry III, were captured. This enabled Robert to launch a counter-offensive and chase Dafydd back into Wales. He was then attacked from an unexpected quarter. In December Earl Simon summoned Robert to London to answer ‘divers trespasses’ in the king’s name. He duly turned up and was thrown into the Tower. Either Robert’s actions had got out of hand, or Simon used them as a pretext to imprison the earl and seize his lands.

After Simon’s death at Evesham in August 1265, Robert was handed an opportunity to redeem his fortunes. Both Henry and Edward were willing to take him back into the fold, and he was offered a royal pardon. For reasons that are still unclear, Robert threw the offer back in their faces and went back into rebellion. He and his allies were defeated at Chesterfield in May 1266, where Robert didn’t exactly cover himself in glory. He was discovered hiding under a pile of woolsacks in a local church, and sent to prison at Windsor in a cage mounted on a wagon.

In 1269, after three years of captivity, Robert was swindled out of his inheritance. In one of the great medieval stitch-ups, the king and his sons forced the earl to sign away his lands under impossible terms of recovery. They were granted to Henry’s second son, Edmund, who became Earl of Lancaster. This formed the basis of the great Duchy of Lancaster enjoyed by John of Gaunt, Henry of Bolingbroke et al.

In a later age Robert’s head would have decorated a pike on Tower Bridge. Instead his life was spared. After the death of Henry III and Edward’s departure on crusade, the now-landless earl mustered his followers and tried to recover his lands by force. In 1271 he briefly occupied one of his estates in Berkshire, only to be driven away by Edmund of Lancaster. Two years later he popped up again in Staffordshire and stormed Chartley Castle, one of his old strongholds.

England was now threatened with another civil war. Robert gained the support of Earl Warenne and Earl Gilbert de Clare, while his lieutenant Roger Godberd waged a guerilla campaign in the Midlands. Ferrers loyalists in the High Peak launched attacks on Nottingham, and swore an oath to kill Edward when he returned to England. The situation was rescued by the prompt action of the regents. Edmund and his colleagues Roger Mortimer and Reynold Grey raced north to crush the northern conspiracy, and in 1274 Chartley was retaken in a brutal assault that slaughtered most of Robert’s surviving followers.

The fugitive earl escaped into the wild. When Edward finally returned, the new king took a surprisingly conciliatory line. Instead of destroying his old foe, he allowed him to sue for his lands at law. Robert managed to regain the manor of Chartley (though not the castle, which was staffed by a royal garrison) and the manor of Holbrook in Derbyshire. Thus he redeemed a fragment of his inheritance, and regained a stake in the landed affairs of the realm. Robert was quiet for the rest of his days, which were short: he died of the gout in 1279, aged just forty.

Old resentments died hard among the medieval aristocracy. Robert’s heir, John Ferrers, spent his life lobbying unsuccessfully for the return of his father’s estates. Perhaps to get him out of the kingdom, Edward II made John seneschal of Gascony and packed him off to govern the duchy. This proved a disaster as John deliberately ill-treated the Gascon nobility in order to cause trouble for the king. Even Philip IV of France, no friend to the Plantagenet regime, was moved to declare:

“The said John de Ferrers, we learn, behaves thus because just as the late king of England disinherited the said John’s father, so he wishes to disinherit his and our son Edward II, but may this enterprise, with God’s help, not succeed; but, if it is true, let him perish in his iniquity”.

Philip’s wish came true. The Gascon gentry had a straightforward method of dealing with oppressive outsiders, and arranged to have John murdered. He died of ‘noxious poison’ in 1312, the luckless son of a luckless father.